At first sight the stance of Friends in 1725 appears to bear little relationship with
the spontaneous outbursts that created and sustained Quakers in the 1650s.
Denouncing injustice, going naked for a sign, calling for political transformation,
interrupting church services, pronouncing judgment on society, welcoming the
imminent millennium, were either absent or little emphasized after 1700. Far
from identifying with the poor and outcast, Quakers viewed these groups as
social problems to be helped by workhouses and relief. Friends had become
respectable artisans, farmers, and merchants with only a smattering of the poor
or gentry.

The transformation in relations with the external world was paralleled by
changes within the Meeting. Early Friends used a minimum of organization,
which was designed to ease the sufferings of those imprisoned and to coordinate
the work of the traveling ministers. By 1725 virtually every part of Quaker
procedures had been standardized and written down in books of "Christian and
Brotherly Advices," and a Friend's life from birth until death took place under
a maze of regulations. Exuberance gave way to steady habits.

The causes of these changes lie in the heritage bequeathed by the first generation, the evolution of the outside society faced by Friends, and the Meetings'
creative response to new conditions. The early eighteenth century was not a time
of regression or decline from the religion of the First Publishers of Truth. In all
religious movements, the high drama of the foundation eventually gives way to
coalescing, definition, and preservation of the traditions.

From the beginnings of the movement, Friends had insisted that the governance
of the Light led to strict moral behavior. Quakers were just as "puritanical" as
other religious radicals and had insisted upon due order within meetings for
worship and Christian behavior in the outside world. Precise standards for be-

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